Brow Beat

The Very Funny First Episode of Dan Harmon’s HarmonQuest Is Online

A team of outcasts answers the call of destiny—or at least, the instructions of the Dungeon master—in the first episode of HarmonQuest, which NBC Seeso has made available for free online. The show’s premise is simple: Creator Dan Harmon, along with friends Jeff Davis, Erin McGathy, and Spencer Crittenden, play role-playing game Pathfinder in front of a live audience, and their dialogue is then animated to show their characters’ adventures.

Episode 1 sets the series in motion, introducing Harmon’s character, Fondue Zoobag, a half-orc who leads a team of outcasts to save their realm from the Heralds of Manticore. Since each episode was filmed live and in real time, there’s a certain amount of figuring out what, exactly, is happening at any given point (the players don’t have the benefit of the animation to guide them), but it’s at those moments that the show is at its funniest—like when Crittenden has to remind guest star Paul F. Tompkins that his head has been on fire for several turns.

You can watch the rest of the series, including episodes with Aubrey Plaza as a gnome with some unusual skills and Chelsea Peretti as a monk named Deepak Chopra, on Seeso.